It may strike you as odd that I have decided to run two such radically different films into one review. The fact is, though, that they have a surprising amount in common. Okay, the former is based upon an incident from history and the latter on a marketing ploy, but both draw on graphic novels as their main source of inspiration and both deal strongly with issues of honour, courage, responsibility and comradeship. Despite one featuring live actors and one being entirely animated 300 is so heavily dominated by CGI that it might as well be entirely animated.
It plays so fast and loose with history and reality that it drifts into the purely fantastic realms on TMNT. The portrayal of the (self-proclaimed) god-king, Xerxes as an 8 foot tall lipstick-wearing gulch-monkey may be meant as a subtle motivation for the character; i.e., he had to conquer the world to make the rest of the planet accept him & make him feel loved, or I might just be reading a smidgeon too much into it. It has a few extra scenes inserted to expand it to full feature length because, let's face it, the story was a bit light on detail even before it got hacked back for the constraints of the narrative-lite preferences of the graphic novel fan. Mostly, these deal with a rather odd political set-up which sees the king of the Spartans undermined by politicians. This, alongside the final speeches about fighting for the 'restoration' of democracy and 'freedom' give the film a distinctly pro-war, and support-America-in-Iraq tone which must go a long way to explaining its popularity in the US.
It's entertaining enough, but it didn't need the addition of orc-like characters and freaks.It's also hard to give a damn about anyone in the film. They're all cyphers rather than rounded characters and why should we care about a king who starts a war against both overwhelming odds and the wishes of his people, who is further offered more than he could ever gain by allying with his foe and who still refuses to yield to reason?
Despite it's target juvenile audience and its far more frivolous tone, TMNT actually draws some deeper characters, whom it is possible to like. Alright, we're not talking any real depth, here and the script is far from literature. Indeed it seems to be little more than the typical Hollywood hackery I usually despise, but it's entertaining, light-hearted fun. It has a clearer and somehow deeper and more resonant morality to it and this should not be. Where 300 seems to be in a rush to get to the next fight and the next rock video-style slow-motion, blood-spattering, homo-erotic pec-fest TMNT actually has decent pace and development.
And there's a sentence I never thought I'd say!
The real reason these films are combined in one review, though is because I draw the same conclusion about each:
Perfectly pitched at its target audience, with enough to keep the rest of us entertained and engaged. Once one accepts this film for what it is - an animated roller-coaster ride - a more than happy couple of hours can be passed in the cinema with one's brain deactivated.
TMNT wins by a length, though and - again I can't believe I'm saying this - the one to choose.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Review: Outlaw
Little more than a.n.other stereotypical Brit gangster film, this poorly-paced actioner tries for originality by looking at the world from the victims' point of view. Sort of.
From the montages of news clips and shots of hoodies hanging around the streets, through those other recent staples of Brit cinema, the washed-out colour and too much hand-held photography, we are given a clear picture of the feral, thug-controlled society in which we now live. Into this picture of urban blight come the stories of our characters. Danny Dwyer's soon-to-be-married City wide-boy is successful, reasonably wealthy and living well, but is bullied at work and having violent dreams. Sean Bean's taciturn soldier who returns from the war to find the locks changed and his wife shacked up with another man is played with his usual intensity but is still little more than a cypher. He ends up in an hotel where the creepy, racist security guard has rigged his own cameras inside the rooms.
Somehow, Dyer knows the Security guard as 'someone who can get things done.' Even before said character has met Bean's who is the one who actually does the doing.
As things go on we discover that few of the characters are any different from the thugs they target. Most have dark secrets in their past and they turn on one another very quickly.
It is this film's one saving grace that the characters are not sympathetic and that their violent vigilantism is neither heroic not successful. It suffers, though, from poor plotting, little cohesion and thoroughly stupid dream-sequence in which Dyer is chased and attacked bya gang of thugs. That this later turns out to be a premonition of sorts and features people he could not have met, but who did attack another member of the group is totally pointless and out of place in this film.
Only one police officer, the out-of-touch and out-of-date Bob Hoskins, is shown as being anything other than a corrupt, self-serving bureaucrat in the pay of gangsters. It is offensive to imply that, rather than deal with violent thugs on the street, they can be turned into an armed hit-squad for a mobster.
This film is a sadly missed opportunity. The montage scenes of the brutal cess-pit into which our society seems to be descending are excellent. The smug, sneering thugs, the petty violence and yobbery depicted are perfect representations of certain areas and attitudes all-too prevalent today.
I think this was meant to be and attempt to look at how being surrounded and confronted by this behaviour and the way we seem to be geared up to protect the criminal at the expense of the ordinary person but it misses the mark by a country mile. By making the protagonists as bad sa the thugs to begin with, a chance to see how an everyman pushed over the edge is affected by descending into the mire. Too many characters dissipate the effects and not really getting to know most of them makes it hard to care about any of them. Only the lawyer is seen to be truly affected, tempted and to have any real journey or moral dilemma. Had the script concentrated on him rather than Dyer's irritating, whiny city-boy this could have been an outstanding film. As it is, it is a tedious mess that ignores the story and simply glories in its brutal violence.
From the montages of news clips and shots of hoodies hanging around the streets, through those other recent staples of Brit cinema, the washed-out colour and too much hand-held photography, we are given a clear picture of the feral, thug-controlled society in which we now live. Into this picture of urban blight come the stories of our characters. Danny Dwyer's soon-to-be-married City wide-boy is successful, reasonably wealthy and living well, but is bullied at work and having violent dreams. Sean Bean's taciturn soldier who returns from the war to find the locks changed and his wife shacked up with another man is played with his usual intensity but is still little more than a cypher. He ends up in an hotel where the creepy, racist security guard has rigged his own cameras inside the rooms.
Somehow, Dyer knows the Security guard as 'someone who can get things done.' Even before said character has met Bean's who is the one who actually does the doing.
As things go on we discover that few of the characters are any different from the thugs they target. Most have dark secrets in their past and they turn on one another very quickly.
It is this film's one saving grace that the characters are not sympathetic and that their violent vigilantism is neither heroic not successful. It suffers, though, from poor plotting, little cohesion and thoroughly stupid dream-sequence in which Dyer is chased and attacked bya gang of thugs. That this later turns out to be a premonition of sorts and features people he could not have met, but who did attack another member of the group is totally pointless and out of place in this film.
Only one police officer, the out-of-touch and out-of-date Bob Hoskins, is shown as being anything other than a corrupt, self-serving bureaucrat in the pay of gangsters. It is offensive to imply that, rather than deal with violent thugs on the street, they can be turned into an armed hit-squad for a mobster.
This film is a sadly missed opportunity. The montage scenes of the brutal cess-pit into which our society seems to be descending are excellent. The smug, sneering thugs, the petty violence and yobbery depicted are perfect representations of certain areas and attitudes all-too prevalent today.
I think this was meant to be and attempt to look at how being surrounded and confronted by this behaviour and the way we seem to be geared up to protect the criminal at the expense of the ordinary person but it misses the mark by a country mile. By making the protagonists as bad sa the thugs to begin with, a chance to see how an everyman pushed over the edge is affected by descending into the mire. Too many characters dissipate the effects and not really getting to know most of them makes it hard to care about any of them. Only the lawyer is seen to be truly affected, tempted and to have any real journey or moral dilemma. Had the script concentrated on him rather than Dyer's irritating, whiny city-boy this could have been an outstanding film. As it is, it is a tedious mess that ignores the story and simply glories in its brutal violence.
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